I've put 44 hours into this so far (bought on discount). It's a fantastic game and the devs have been really responsive to community feedback. They made a change recently which the community felt was a serious mistake, and after a petition to reverse the change gained a very large number of responses, the devs obligingly complied.

I'm getting *wrecked* at this game, made it to day 70 on 100% difficulty but dayyyyyyyyum shit is hard. Great game. I'd love to see some formation mechanics similar to Rise of Nations so you can move mixed infantry around more effectively. And lets not talk about the pathing...

I'm getting *wrecked* at this game, made it to day 70 on 100% difficulty but dayyyyyyyyum shit is hard. Great game. I'd love to see some formation mechanics similar to Rise of Nations so you can move mixed infantry around more effectively. And lets not talk about the pathing...

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A lot of people have complained about the pathing (it really is irritating), and one of the requests which the devs are taking under consideration is the option of making way points.

A lot of people have complained about the pathing (it really is irritating), and one of the requests which the devs are taking under consideration is the option of making way points.

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I see 3 major things that need to happen :

1) Units should not auto path through unexplored areas when being directed to an explored area
2) Units should be able to move in between rows of buildings that are tightly spaced, like tents/cottages, the zombies don't seem to have much problem.
3) Tesla towers should have greater range and not require a worker

I think the combination of those would nice in addition to just 'better' pathfinding ai.

Also, I feel that you should be able to upgrade the workshops, this would reduce overall tiles required to tech up.

A nailbiting experience on day 111, map 1 @ 55%. I had a mixed start; a useful cache of supplies nearby, but caught in the middle of a really tight choke with almost nowhere to expand.

I usually get snipers by day 7 or 8, but on this occasion I had to work a lot harder for them due to the lack of available iron (and no iron caches). Neverthless, once I had my snipers I took them to the nearest VoD to level up and grab supplies. And wow, those supplies.

By day 69 I had cleared about half of the map, and had a couple of well secured choke points. My snipers in particular helped me hold off the horde without much difficulty at this stage.

On day 78 I held off the horde with five ballistae and 26 snipers.

My income had previously peaked at just over 1,000 gold, but now I was running out of room for expansion and my income was down to 686. I still had plenty of resource reserves and a lot of cash, but my stone was only trickling in due to the scarcity of available mining spots. At this point I knew I had to take a risk and expand. Fortunately by this time I had now cleared about 75% of the map.

On day 85 a horde from the west split into two fronts. Fortunately the bulk of them attacked a well fortified flank which held a funnel shaped choke point, with two ballistae, twelve snipers, and a Titan. The smaller choke point was easily held by a ballista and two Titans. Once the Titans had held the small point, I sent them up to the larger one to help out. Those Titans have a surprisingly good range.

On day 94 I faced a huge horde from the south. By this time I had cleared the map, and expanded into the south for additional resources, especially gold and iron. My stone was still trickling in at +11 (after adjusting for Power Plant upkeep). I had established a forward position with three ballistae, and quickly threw up a forest of wooden walls to buy time for reinforcement of the stronger rearguard position in a fortunately narrow choke.

The forward position was overrun as I knew it would be, but the time it provided was invaluable. I was able to upgrade two of my ballistae to Executors, add another ballista, and reinforce my two Titans with six snipers and six Thanatos. Although my forward position had fallen, it had served its purpose, and the remains of the horde (though strong and numerous), broke against my deeply extended rearguard.

Now it's day 111, and the final wave has arrived. This is my best chance yet at winning. I have around 30 snipers (most of them vets), 20 Thanatos, and three Titans. I have reinforced my walls, secured my chokepoints, and paused all but two of my lumber mills to save power for the three Shock Towers. I am not torching my farms or other buildings. We will stand together or we will fall together.

Holy shit, your having these awesome battles and occupying the whole map, whilst I died on day 7 on my latest attempt of the game. zZz

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This is after 70 hours of gameplay, repeatedly failing to beat even the first map even once, at 55%. This was my best effort yet. The learning curve is long and steep, but you really need to listen to what the game is telling you and play it accordingly. I started having a lot more success when I played the game the way the mechanics tell you to play it. Snipers by day 7 or 8 (10 at latest), is a great start.

I try to rush to the wood research center to get farms researched asap.

How early do you start walling off?

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1. Housing > woodmill > food supply (fisheries and hunter's huts) > wood research center > soldier center. Somewhere in there I also build an iron mine as soon as I can, for snipers. I usually start recruiting snipers by day 7 or 8. I don't bother with farms until mid-game; fisheries and huts are much more efficient until your population gets to around 400.
2. With snipers, I don't need walls for a while. A small handful of snipers is more than enough to handle the first three waves without any walls at all. As soon as I have at least five snipers, I send them out to explore while I keep my three rangers and soldier at my base to defend against wandering zombies.

My kiting game is getting on point though, for the first 2 waves I usually kite the mobs parallel to a wall of rangers/snipers/ballistae and it makes pretty short work of them.

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Kiting is a good strat, but I find the best advantage of snipers is that the noise they make attracts zombies, saving you going to look for them, and saving you a lot of kiting micro. Kiting can be really useful to draw away mobs from VoDs, but gets time consuming otherwise.

Been playing this constantly for the last week and it's damn good, tough but good. Just made it to the final round but because I didn't get my ballista's upgraded fast enough.

My tips:
Expand, expand, expand.
You want about 400 pop before on or turn 20.
Archers only till you have titans, then titans only
Expand in directions of stone and iron
Your expanded areas dont need heavy defence but your core better.
Look for choke points or create them yourself
Don't upgrade later tiers - apart from ballistas and houses
You want to aim for about 1700-200 gold per tick

Ok, so I beat this on 55% ; Did Titans/Snipers/Thanatos and it worked out.

I found the thing with Executors/Ballistae there is no point _only_ building them at the edge of your base, you should expand a little, build them and leave them. Then expand again, build exec/ballista with new expansion, rinse repeat.

So, when the shit hits the fan at the end you have a series of fall back points. I also put like 3-4 exec/ballista etc in range of the command center.